A birthday card for Karen

For those who may not be paying the same close attention to my life that I tend to give it, Karen is my wife, a woman I met and married when I was a mere scrap of a youth, back when Kennedy was president, Charles DeGaulle was the leader of France, and no one had ever heard of rap, reggae, or Ritalin.

Most Americans had never even heard of Viet Nam, Laos, or Cambodia. The world did not yet know of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, and California had considerably fewer than half the number of people it does now. Music was available on vinyl discs, not on MP3 players. Jerry Brown's daddy, Pat, was governor of the state, and Barack Obama was barely a year old. The moon was unmarked by human footprints.

There were hipsters, but no hippies, and there was no war on drugs because heavy drug use or addiction to hard drugs was limited to very small pockets, mostly in big cities.

At the moment Karen married me, she forfeited her job as an airline hostess (stewardess, in those days) because "stews" were required to be attractive single women. They could lose their jobs if they exceeded very strict weight limits that had nothing to do with the carrying capacity of jet aircraft, and everything to do with marketing an alluring (and available) image to married business class flyers.

When Karen gave birth to our first child, Sionann, husbands were not allowed to be present during delivery. Married women could not apply for credit without their husband's signature.

Though I married in haste, I married very well, and a life without Karen is simply beyond the reach of my imagination. She's been my rudder when storms struck and I was in danger of being blown off course. She took care of the details that baffled or bored me, reading the fine print that I, like many men, couldn't be bothered with reading. I might have graduated from college without her, but it's not very likely because I never could bear reading the catalogues that spelled out what hoops I had to jump through in order to attain my degrees.

I would have taken courses willy-nilly, without giving thought to what requirements were being satisfied, or how it all built toward a completely arbitrary "completion."

She kept track of appointments I would have otherwise have missed, and she cooked meals that were almost certainly the best things being eaten on most evenings in most of the towns where we took up residence. It's probably no exaggeration to say that I wouldn't have lived to the age I am now had I not been married to a woman with such generous amounts of love and devotion, willing to worry about my health when I wasn't attentive enough to worry about it myself.

She gave us two daughters, doing the hard part to bring them into the world, and those two most precious children have been the absolute center of my life, providing meaning for much of what I did, and rewarding my efforts with the joy they brought.

Having those girls was Karen's idea, not mine, and if becoming a father had been left strictly up to me, I probably would have chosen to forego that role, even though it proved to be the best damn thing I ever did, even when I may not always have been as good at it as I might have been.

I arrange a couple of these prose bouquets to Karen each year, a habit I didn't know I would acquire when I started writing this weekly column going on a decade ago. But whenever an anniversary or a birthday is looming, I feel the impulse to write a few words in praise of this woman who has stood by me through it all, from the days when I shaved more often than strictly required by the growth of my facial hair, to these days when I'm retired and spending more time loitering around the house than most women could probably endure.

I might have quit writing these columns about Karen, but lots of people like them, and I'm a sucker for praise, even though I don't entirely understand why a guy going on about his wife would have much appeal to readers.

But, since it does, and since I aim to please, and since these testimonials to my wife prompt a positive response from readers, including the one with whom I share a roof, it behooves me to continue writing them, especially since I have yet to exhaust my appreciation for the woman who gave me her love, her life, and those two adored daughters.

Chief among the bountiful gifts Karen bestowed when she agreed to share her life with me was her sunny disposition. Her childhood wasn't exactly a bed of roses, but she learned ways to cope with the challenges life throws at all of us, to keep her bearings and maintain a positive attitude. Though she is no more blind to the woes of the world than I am, she manages to face each day with a rare capacity for joy and a zest for learning that buoys the spirits of everyone within the radius of her radiance.

So this is a birthday card to Karen, one day late, with love and appreciation.